"Little Sisters" Special Guests at SOTU

01/12/16

By Hadley Heath

Sisters Loraine Marie Maguire and Constance Veit, members of the order "Little Sisters of the Poor" will attend President Obama's final State of the Union address, even as their order fights with the Obama Administration in court. The Sisters will be guests of House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Most recently the Little Sisters, along with other petitioners suing over the so-called "birth control mandate," filed a brief with the Supreme Court, who will hear their case this year. Their case centers on an accommodation that the Administration offered to some religious groups on the mandate. Churches and houses of worship can be exempted entirely, but other religious non-profits, like the Little Sisters (a group of nuns who care for elderly and dying patients) can only be "accommodated." The Sisters and other petitioners explain that the government should not be in the business of deciding which religious groups are "religious enough" for the exemption, and that the accommodation still forces them to violate their deeply-held religious groups, as they are party to the process by which their employees could access contraceptives that they find morally objectionnable.

The Independent Women's Forum, the organization behind HealthCareLawsuits.org, has filed an amicus brief, siding with petitioners.

Blogroll:

The Independent Women's Forum is on a mission to expand the conservative coalition, both by increasing the number of women who understand and value the benefits of limited government, personal liberty, and free markets, and by countering those who seek to ever-expand government in the name of protecting women.

IWF is a non-partisan, 501(c)(3) research and educational institution. By aggressively seeking earned media, providing easy-to-read, timely publications and commentary, and reaching out to the public, we seek to cultivate support for these important principles and encourage women to join us in working to return the country to limited, Constitutional government. To learn more, visit us at www.iwf.org.